Ask HN: Have you ever tried to find clinical trials for yourself/a relative? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you ever tried to find clinical trials for yourself/a relative?

1 pointcjbarber4 comments

If you have, what resources did you use? How did you find it? Any tips? Were you able to find a trial?

A friend of mine has been in the medical industry for a while and is working full time trying to solve this - he searched for 12 months trying to find experimental trials for his grandfather because the prescribed drugs weren't having an impact, unfortunately to no avail.

If you are in PA/SF I'd love to email/skype/meet/eat/coffee/etc :) (and so would he!)

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I'm almost certain that your friend has already looked at http://clinicaltrials.gov/ given his background and time looking. But I'm not sure where else he would be able to find a listing of reputable, vetted clinical trials especially for those in the U.S. If his grandfather's illness has a support association (i.e., of other patients with the same or related illnesses), perhaps members of that association might know of upcoming trials.

He certainly has. Would you be able to send me an email? I'm cjbarber@stanford.edu

I scoured the web for your email but wasn't able to come up with anything

I updated my profile description with my email address: w.victoryee@gmail.com

Heh, I ended up with this particular username because I forgot to set my email address with a couple previous accounts, then proceeded to forget my password to those accounts.

I don't think I would be able to help more than what I mentioned in my previous comment... All I know about clinical trials are from (relatively basic) courses on the statistical analysis of them; I'm not actually in the clinical trials field myself. If you're looking for someone who is, might I suggest reddit (if you haven't already tried there)? Sorry I'm not of more assistance.

I helped a well known cancer center create an internal mobile app that allowed doctors to browse and filter a listing of all their current clinical trials. They had the information available in a database and exposed it via an (again, internal) API. However, I'm sure that talking with the right people would allow access to the list as well, so directly contacting research organizations would probably be just as fruitful.

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